For there is no response. At most one may see a solitary
figure dressed in black stuff creeping stealthily along like a ghost
on her way from the empty house to the empty church. When the bells
leave off silence falls again, there is no one in the street. One's
own footsteps echo from the wall; we walk along in a dream; old words
and old rhymes crowd into the brain. It is a dead City--a City newly
dead--we are gazing upon the dead.
Life and thought have gone away
Side by side.
All within is dark as night.
In the windows is no light;
And no murmur at the door
So frequent on its hinge before.
Silence everywhere. The blinds are down in every window of the tall
stack of offices, the doors are all closed, if there are shutters they
are up, there are no carte in the streets, no porters carry burdens,
there are no wheelbarrows, there is no more work done of any kind or
sort. Even the taverns and the eating-shops are shut--no one is
thinking of work. To-morrow--Monday--poverty will lift again his cruel
arm, and drive the world to work with crack of whip. The needle-woman
will appear again with her bundle of work; the porters, the packers,
the carmen, the clerks, the merchants themselves will all come
back--the vast army of those who earn their daily bread in the City
will troop back again.
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